The "Eyes" have it.

 “If you had weak eyes, they needed exercise to get strong. Glasses were like crutches. They prevented people with feeble eyes from seeing the world on their own.” 
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

I have very poor eyesight, and I can't imagine a world without my glasses or contacts. Ellen Hollman

“Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?” Groucho Marx

So this topic I am an expert in. Truthfully. I don’t need to do any research here to wax prolific and wise.

Remember those days when you didn’t squint? You could read a book and actually have a bend in your elbow? Not hold the book down to your knees in order to see the print? Remember when you would brag that you had pilot vision and could read the eye chart at the Ophthalmologists’ office on the 20/15 line and could see the reading chart all the way down to the minutest print?

Ah, youth, like good vision, is wasted on the young.

Welcome to the age of Presbyopia.  That’s just the medical-speak for the need for reading glasses. The technical definition is a condition in which the lens of the eye loses its ability to focus, making it difficult to see objects up close. Hence, the need for reading glasses. So just at the time Mother Nature tells you that you will no longer be able to have babies, she also makes you look and feel more like an old woman by forcing you to wear glasses in order to see up close.

Talk about stacking the deck against your ego and psyche!

My eyes have always been a disaster. Highly myopic and astigmatic, I had glasses at 8 and contacts at 23. In my forties I suffered through two very traumatic retinal detachments, one requiring a surgical buckle be placed into my eye to hold it together, the other a cryogenic bubble injected into the back of my eye to keep the retina in place.

Lovely.

In my fifties –which I really just entered, I’ve had two cataract surgeries already. My daughter refers to me in mixed company as the bionic eye woman because I have two lens implants in my eyes.

All that said and done, I am also in the time of the presbyope. So even though I now have 20/20 vision for the distance – something I haven’t had since about 5 years old - I still need reading glasses because of the presbyopia for the near vision.

I shall repeat: Lovely.

I think it really does stink that when women enter this time of their lives – the menopause years –that we also get slammed with the vision problems. It isn’t enough that we gain weight in odd places, grow hair in even odder ones, and generally feel like a broken thermostat most of the time. Now we have to suffer through the embarrassment and inconvenience of always needing to have some sort of prescriptive eye device nearby in order to read anything within two feet. And in this era where Ipads, Blackberry phones and Smart phones rule the world, this is just plain wrong.

Now, all the negativism aside, we are not powerless in this instance, as we are with trying to control mood swings and forgo belly fat. You can fight this battle, and with relative ease and just a little perseverance.

The job for which I am actually paid a salary is to help people such as myself navigate through this problem of sight. Namely, I am a licensed Contact Lens technician. See? I told you I know of what I speak. The past four to five years has seen an explosion in prescriptive contact lenses for people in our age group – roughly 45-65 - or as they are fondly called by historians and advertising execs - the Baby Boomer Generation. Why this explosion you ask? Because we are the generation that tries to solve problems by coming up with new knowledge and technology in order to make our lives and our lifestyles better.

Trust me when I say most people, if given the choice, would choose NOT to wear glasses. They are heavy at times, inconvenient for sports, especially those that require a ball to come sailing at your face, fog up when you go from a hot to cold environment or vise versa, and practically obliterate your peripheral vision. Contact lenses have, historically, freed a person up to do things like water ski and be able to see; ski downhill and see the bottom without the heavy encumbrance of prescriptive glasses dripping down their nose; play a sport and not have to worry about a fractured orbit if a ball comes sailing at their face and makes a connection with glasses to bone. Plus, the world around you can actually see your features without glasses blocking the view.

A few years ago we could only correct distance vision with contacts. Then some eye docs came up with the idea of monovision where you would wear a distance contact in your dominant eye and a reading lens in your non-dominant. That worked for a majority of people, but the vision was never as perfect as it was with the binocular vision of glasses and some people had problems with their depth perception. So, one company developed a bifocal contact lens and the industry changed forever. At first, this bifocal contact lens owned the market because it was the only one available in a soft contact lens.

But then the baby boomers emerged and all bets were off.

Every major company that produces and sells contact lenses now offers what is called a Multifocal Contact Lens.  Multifocal, meaning many foci of light, or in laymen’s terms: many different visions. The advent of computers and tablets now ruling the world has given rise to the need for one more type of vision, other than near and far: Middle Vision. No this is not an R.J Tolkein invention where little men called hobbits abound. This is the vision you need for computer clarity, ipad reading, or watching the mini-television connected to the treadmill at the gym. And it’s a BIG vision need for the sighted world right now.

Multifocal contact lenses are comfortable, highly water and oxygen carrying, and can get rid of your glasses’ need for all the things you love doing.  The perseverance aspect of all this comes about when you are fitted. Not every first prescription is the one you will end up with, because the office visit is a controlled environment. You really need to wear the lenses in the real world and do all of your adl’s (activities of daily living) and evaluate your vision needs and desires. If you are the person on the computer 12 hours daily, you will probably need to have the rx tweaked a few times in order to give you the computer as best vision. Or if you are a truck driver, you need excellent distance vision and good up close so that you can see your dashboard, controls, and paperwork. This is what I do all day long for people, and believe me when I say the majority of them are grateful for any kind of vision that doesn’t require glasses.

So, the next time you go for an eye check up – which I sincerely hope is yearly – remember this little chat.  Don’t give into old eye age without a fight. Some battles are really worth fighting and this is one where you are pretty much guaranteed a victory.

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